Redd’s feline assassin had just returned from one of his late-night forays into the city. Where he went on these excursions, or what he did, not even Her Imperial Viciousness knew. But he inevitably returned with a load of bird carcasses, which he would drop at his mistress’s feet. Amid the carcasses tonight, however, there was also a book.
“Think you’re posh, do you?” Redd fumed when she saw it. “Want to improve yourself with reading?” “Look at the title,” said The Cat.
The book flew up to her hand. Alice in Wonderland. “A-L-I-C-E?” Redd said.
“It’s about your niece,” said The Cat. “It’s filled with idiotic lies about Wonderland, but it’s famous here.”
“Someone wrote a book about my niece?” Redd turned on her tutor. “Did you know about this?” “I swear I didn’t,” Vollrath lied.
She let the book fall open in her hand. She riffled through its pages from first to last with her imagination. To think that Alyss had been immortalized by some Earth scribbler! She slammed the book shut. She tapped a long finger against its cover, under the author’s name. “Find this Lewis Carroll and bring him here!”
The Cat hurried off. Sacrenoir and the rest of the commanders loped away to discipline their troops.
Redd scowled in the direction of the palace’s Renaissance Court, where her rejected recruits lay dead on the cold hard floor. “At this rate, it will take a lifetime to amass even half the soldiers I’ll need.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Vollrath, his ears genuflecting, “a few of us should return to Wonderland to search for your maze while Sacrenoir and others continue to gather an army here?”
Redd knew, despite her many displays of imaginative strength, that her powers had weakened. She would never have admitted it-she was still a hundred times stronger than anyone around-but she was
too far from the Heart Crystal. She had to get close to it again, to feel a fresh influx of its energy, and sooner rather than later…
CHAPTER 29
I N HEART Palace’s memorial wing, Alyss was sitting on an exact replica of her mother’s favorite
settee, gazing expectantly into a looking glass as if hoping to find the wisdom of the ages in its quicksilver.
So many rulers become tyrants, partaking more of Black Imagination than White. Is it because being a queen or king makes you selfish? When everyone around you does as you tell them, never speaks their true minds for fear of upsetting you…How can a ruler not grow increasingly less tolerant of anyone or anything that frustrates her? But mother wasn’t like that…was she?
“Queen Alyss.”
She hadn’t noticed Bibwit and General Doppelganger enter the room. How long had they been standing there?
“A curious thing has been discovered,” Bibwit said. “I’m almost afraid to ask what you mean by ‘curious.’”
“And I’m almost afraid to tell you, my dear Alyss. But it appears that imaginationists who were in the continuum at the time of Molly’s-what shall I call it?-her mishap, yes, well…it seems that these imaginationists have found themselves unable to perform. We’ve had reports of conjurers unable to conjure, writers unable to write, musicians unable to play their instruments or compose, and inventors unable to invent. Just as the mysterious NRG that Homburg Molly unwittingly released has rendered the Crystal Continuum unusable, so too has it rendered the abilities of imaginationists.”
“The NRG does seem to be dissipating with time,” General Doppelganger offered. “Whenever one of my soldiers tries to enter a looking glass portal, the NRG knocks him back, but not as forcefully as it once did. The continuum should shortly be available to citizens. We do hope that some remnant of the weapon that caused all of this will be found once the continuum is viable again, but we’re not counting on it.”
Alyss remained silent, staring into the looking glass. Bibwit motioned with an ear and the general took the hint.
“Queen Alyss, if you will excuse me, I must tend to…something. Please accept my congratulations.” Alyss was startled. “For what?”
But the general’s footfalls were already echoing down the hall. Bibwit swiveled his ears away from the door, the better to focus them on his immediate surroundings. He peeked into the looking glass that had so held Alyss’ attention. He saw nothing but the room’s reflection.
“Have you located him?” he asked.
Hatter. Alyss had, in her imagination’s eye, spotted the Milliner less than half a lunar hour ago, but it had been exactly the same as all the other times: Instead of finding him deep in negotiations with Arch to secure Molly’s release, he was tagging along with the king as one of his attendants-at banquets, speeches, gaming events, military exercises. Hatter’s behavior was, in the worst sense of the word, curious.
“No,” she lied. “I still haven’t found him.”
The Milliner’s disobedience had necessitated a change in strategy: She’d had to direct the knight and rook, already on their way to rendezvous with Arch at the Sin Bin Gaming Club, to arrest the Lord and Lady of Diamonds instead, leaving Hatter to try and secure Molly’s release as he thought best. Nothing else seemed feasible. Whether or not the Milliner would face consequences for his disobedience depended, to some degree, on what happened with Molly, as well as his attitude when-if-he and his daughter returned.
“I’ve also been searching for Molly,” she said. “In Boarderton and the Ganmede province…” Bibwit sat down beside her on the tufted bench. “But you don’t see her either?”
“No.”
She’d been contacted by Arch soon after Hatter’s arrival in Boarderland. “Queen Heart,” the king had boomed, “I am thankful-for Homburg Molly’s sake-that you’ve sent the Milliner to negotiate on her behalf, as the Ganmedes requested. Mr. Madigan is a keen negotiator and I have every confidence that he and the Ganmedes will shortly agree to terms assuring Homburg Molly’s release. But why hear it from me when you can hear it from Hatter himself?”
The Milliner had then come online, Alyss hoping for a clue to help interpret his behavior. But looking as blank as a fresh sheet of papyrus, Hatter only corroborated what Arch had already told her-he was negotiating for Molly’s release; there was cause for optimism.
He must have known she would look for him with her imagination’s eye; which meant he must have known that she had seen him gallivanting about with Arch; which in turn meant he knew that Alyss knew that he was lying about his negotiations. And yet he had lied anyway. Why? Even if Arch had been eavesdropping, with a timely dip of the head or shift of the eyes Hatter could have communicated the precariousness of the role he’d assumed. With a patterned blinking of eyelids, he could have reassured her that all she’d seen him doing, he had done for Molly and the queendom. Had his love for Molly made a deserter of him?
“I think perhaps I too should congratulate you,” Bibwit said. “Why does everyone keep wanting to congratulate me?”
Bibwit winked and nudged Alyss several times. “Why, indeed. I can understand your not wanting to make a grand announcement of it, Alyss. But I have not lived through untold generations for nothing, and
I believe that even if the queendom weren’t dealing with its present problems, you would not have chosen to flaunt your disregard of a royal practice that Wonderland queens have abided by since at least the time of my birth.” He winked and nudged her some more, his ears flopping friskily atop his head.
“Bibwit, what are you talking about?”
“Although,” the tutor qualified, “if you do plan to marry below your rank, I think you can outrage history even more by choosing lower than a guardsman.”
Alyss blushed.